Ask the Honcho of Internet Radio's SomaFM

This week, Rusty, the general manager of Internet Radio's SomaFM, is the subject of the Slashdot Interview Spotlight. Some of you may remember Rusty from a recent Salon interview. Now he's making himself available to Slashdot and I'm sure you all can figure out a few questions to ask that weren't covered before. I'm sure many of you have questions about CARP, the future of Internet Radio, and the technology behind it. So let's get to it! As usual, we'll send off the 10 highest moderated questions on to Rusty, and we hope to have the answers for you sometime next week. <PLUG TYPE=SHAMELESS>BTW - If you haven't checked out the streams available at SomaFM, give it a try. Taste the Groove Salad, and the other 8 commercial free streams available on SomaFM. Ah, if only normal FM radio could be this good!</PLUG>

RIAA and CARP

[jpt.d]

How do you see the possibilities of winning against a CARP that smells of RIAA? Because RIAA has a lot of control over what traditional radio plays and control is what this is all about.

"Ah, if only normal FM radio could be this good!"

[gmaestro]

sometimes it is [npr.org]

Cutting out RIAA music

[mcc]

Something that has been brought up a couple times in other threads, and that i am kind of curious about:

The CARP is something the RIAA is imposing, correct?
Does this or does this not mean that if an internet radio station were certain to only play music by non-RIAA artists, it could stay in business?
It would not be terribly easy to find material for a net radio station that only played independent music, but it would be possible, i think, and at the least i'd listen to it.
But am i just confused? Would that be feasible from a royalties standpoint? What exactly is the royalties relationship between independent record labels and internet radio, before or after CARP?

One more small question: the page on CARP on your site says that non-US broadcasters would not be subject to the CARP fees. How would this work out? Would this just mean that anyone in Canada would be able to netcast worldwide without having to pay any fees other than the ones imposed by their government? Or would stations outside the U.S. be barred from netcasting to U.S. citizens? If stations outside the U.S. are allowed to run free, what would the regulations say about a server in the U.S. that is just repeating what is being broadcast by an internet streaming radio station located outside the U.S.-- so that the lag created by the internet links that go across the atlantic ocean are minimized. Could a repeater of this sort be classified as just another router, or would the repeater be subject to the CARP payments?

Thanks for clarifying things.. just curious. Hopefully, the LoC will see through this blatant attempt by the RIAA to silence internet radio and none of the above questions will ever become an issue. I wish you luck..

Re:Royalties loophole?

[Dan Crash]

Actually, no, they wouldn't need a license. That's the whole point. Like your cordless phone or your Wi-Fi link, microtransmitters like the FM-10 broadcast at such low powerlevels that they don't require a license.

So, in theory, a large webcaster like Soma webcasting several streams could simply broadcast them first over a micro FM transmitter. The webcasts would then be "retransmissions" of a "nonsubscription broadcast transmission", and subject to the lower royalty rates.

Alternative funding methods...

[edwazere]

Here's a question for you, has SomaFM considered providing links to online stores (like amazon.com) who pay referal fees?

I mean I would have bought loads of these CD's that I'm hearing if all it took was a click and a credit card...

Or am I missing something important about why that wouldn't work?